CONGRESS RETURNS TO OLD PROBLEMS

WASHINGTON -- Congress comes back from vacation this week to face all the domestic problems it left behind five weeks ago and two major foreign policy questions it had not seen coming.

Hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to be a justice on the Supreme Court will begin on Tuesday morning. Floor action on issues from abortion to unemployment will soon follow.

The legislators have had weeks, sometimes months, to make up their minds on those matters and on other domestic measures, among them banking, cable television, crime, gasoline taxes, energy policy and civil rights.

But neither the upheaval in the Soviet Union nor the question of putting off $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel was on their minds before they left on Aug. 2.

A few legislators have been at the Capitol for at least some of the recess, but most have scattered to their home states, taken trips abroad or even gone on old-fashioned family holidays, so there is nothing approaching cohesion on either issue.

The legislators have talked more about the Soviet Union, arguing by news conference and fax machine about sending food, technical assistance and long- term aid to whatever government or governments have asked for help. There is a general expectation that food, at least, will be shipped, but there is uncertainty about where in the budget the money will come from.

One simpler step involving the Soviet Union is likely to be settled first, with both chambers expected to approve favored trade status in a relatively inexpensive move that would encourage change and unity.

Its most noticeable impact on the low level of current trade would be to cut the price of imported vodka by about $1 a fifth.

Late last week, another international issue -- one with important domestic political implications -- was dumped in their laps when the administration said it would ask that action on a request for loan guarantees to Israel to help settle Soviet Jews be postponed until after a Mideast peace conference in October.

The initial reaction from those leaders who had anything to say was agreeable, but the rank and file, and the Israeli lobby, had not been heard from.

Earlier this year, they combined to overcome opposition in the administration and the leadership to emergency aid for Israel during the Persian Gulf war.

Underlying how Congress will proceed on those issues is an insistent Democratic charge that President Bush cares more about foreign policy than domestic policy and would be quicker to justify enlarging the deficit for foreign emergencies than for American suffering.

That is the case legislators expect to make again in the next few days when they try once more to legislate additional benefits for workers who have been out of a job for at least half a year.